The bus we needed to catch in order to attempt to make it by MARTA to my mother's house in Alpharetta apparently doesn't run on Sundays, so we drove instead and used it as an opportunity for our annual "Sunflower Farm visit, just a few miles up the road from my mom's, in Cumming, GA.
Here's my post about this from last year .
We passed the humongous new WalMart, the construction finally done, and saw where the Kohl's and Target and Staples and Petco are being built, the rural landscape of this land changing forever. I held my breath, as I do each year, in hopes that the three seemingly-decadent sunflower fields will still be there, amidst this "strip-mallification."
And yes, there it was, one field already spent and the other two in full flower. My mother walked on her still-healing leg down a dusty path to the edge of field #2 while my younger daughter disappeared in the rows of towering sunflowers, scissors in her hands and a smile on her face. I got to talking, of course, with the owner of this extravagance.
"I always hope . . ." I started to say, and she finished my thought for me.
"That we are still here?"
Yes. Exactly. Turns out the Andersons have owned this land for a very long time. Mrs. Anderson's husband grew up here and she and he bought this land in 1980 from his father. His dad was the one who planted the sunflowers, for beauty. Over time they decided to sell them. A simple stand holds an honor-system box where folks put cash, four bucks for half a dozen stems, right there on the corner of a busy, four-way intersection.
Last week my brother and his family were down visiting from New Jersey. They told us how their town had fought the building of a WalMart and that, in fact, many farmers were selling the development rights to their land to a trust that would preserve the land as farmland.
According to the State of New Jersey Department of Agriculture's website, over 1,700 farms in New Jersey have been preserved to date, for a total of almost 190,000 acres. Find out what is happening in
your state
here . Outside the U.S.? Send us links to what's happening by you!
Here's how the page about Georgia kicks off:
Producing more poultry, peanuts and pecans than any other state in the nation, Georgia agriculture yields an abundance of foods and sits at the core of the region's rich history. Georgia's 40,000 farms cover 29 percent of the state's land area. But, as growth from Atlanta and other Georgia communities creeps outward, sprawling development is threatening to eat away at the state's best agricultural lands.
I ran into yet another artist in the sunflower field, as I do each year, gathering armfuls of sunflowers to bring back to her studio to paint (last year's artist had a still-life set up right in the middle of the field that she was photographing) and I realized that if we are not careful, paint strokes on canvas may be the only way we preserve land such as this.
And so, that's it about the sunflowers until next year.
(I hope.)
Nurturing sustainability close to home and around the world. (And other food for thought!)
The bus we needed to catch in order to attempt to make it by MARTA to my mother's house in Alpharetta apparently doesn't run on Sundays, so we drove instead and used it as an opportunity for our annual "Sunflower Farm visit, just a few miles up the road from my mom's, in Cumming, GA. Here's my post about this from last year .
We passed the humongous new WalMart, the construction finally done, and saw where the Kohl's and Target and Staples and Petco are being built, the rural landscape of this land changing forever. I held my breath, as I do each year, in hopes that the three seemingly-decadent sunflower fields will still be there, amidst this "strip-mallification."
And yes, there it was, one field already spent and the other two in full flower. My mother walked on her still-healing leg down a dusty path to the edge of field #2 while my younger daughter disappeared in the rows of towering sunflowers, scissors in her hands and a smile on her face. I got to talking, of course, with the owner of this extravagance.
"I always hope . . ." I started to say, and she finished my thought for me.
"That we are still here?"
Yes. Exactly. Turns out the Andersons have owned this land for a very long time. Mrs. Anderson's husband grew up here and she and he bought this land in 1980 from his father. His dad was the one who planted the sunflowers, for beauty. Over time they decided to sell them. A simple stand holds an honor-system box where folks put cash, four bucks for half a dozen stems, right there on the corner of a busy, four-way intersection.
Last week my brother and his family were down visiting from New Jersey. They told us how their town had fought the building of a WalMart and that, in fact, many farmers were selling the development rights to their land to a trust that would preserve the land as farmland.
According to the State of New Jersey Department of Agriculture's website, over 1,700 farms in New Jersey have been preserved to date, for a total of almost 190,000 acres. Find out what is happening in your state here . Outside the U.S.? Send us links to what's happening by you!
Here's how the page about Georgia kicks off:
I ran into yet another artist in the sunflower field, as I do each year, gathering armfuls of sunflowers to bring back to her studio to paint (last year's artist had a still-life set up right in the middle of the field that she was photographing) and I realized that if we are not careful, paint strokes on canvas may be the only way we preserve land such as this.
And so, that's it about the sunflowers until next year.
(I hope.)